Tax dollars are going toward an unlawful program of religious indoctrination in prisons, according to Iowa federal Judge Robert W. Pratt, who now finds himself fighting a battle against entrenched forces from evangelical ministries, prison corporations and the Bush administration.

But the only way an inmate could qualify for this kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely religious rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress. The program—which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time—says on its Web site that it seeks “to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.”